All URIs are not equal. Equivalence between URLs depends on the URL's scheme. I'm not sure a
bout URNs. I believe namespaces in XML completely punts on it and says they have to match ch
aracter by character (or is that codepoint by codepoint?). 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@[...].com] 
	Sent: Sat 8/10/2002 7:23 PM 
	To: xml-dev@[...].org 
	Cc: 
	Subject: [xml-dev] Comparable considered necessary
	
	

	I've been thinking about the kind of processing I do with XML.
	
	Nearly all of it involves matching against patterns.  Some of it
	involves simple less-than/greater-than work with position.
	
	I think the largest concrete problem I have with URIs is their lack of a
	common mechanism for saying this equals that.  I can live without
	ordering for names, so that's not a big deal, but the lack of clarity on
	things like:
	
	HTTP://MONASTICXML.COM
	
	vs.
	
	http://monasticxml.com
	
	vs.
	
	http://monasticXML.com
	
	is pretty much killing, even without issues of relative and absolute,
	query strings, etc.  I don't see this getting better in the near future,
	as IRI issues and questions about escaping appear to be growing, not
	resolving.
	
	The lack of clarity - heck, the outright refusal to acknowledge the
	question - about how to get from an identifier to a resource or back
	again - is the nails in the coffin.
	
	It seems on the face of it to be a poor match for a system which depends
	at its foundations on identifying and recognizing labels. 
	
	Maybe it's time to ask if "SGML for the Web" is getting poisoned by some
	folks' notion of the Web, even while it succeeds regularly in expanding
	(often questionably) in expanding many people's concrete experience and
	understanding of the Web.
	
	--
	Simon St.Laurent
	Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
	Errors, errors, all fall down!
	http://simonstl.com
	
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